On being demoted and renewing my passion in teaching

The title is a bit misleading, I wasn't really demoted, but I am moving from 6th grade to 5th grade next year. I taught 5th grade for two years, then looped up with my class to 6th (looping is the best thing ever!) and have been there for four years. This year also marked the eighth year notch on my teaching belt, and I was feeling frustrated and feeling like my passion for teaching was waning. I absolutely love my school and the families in our community, but I just wasn't as excited as I used to be. Things were starting to get monotonous and it is doubly hard when you are not on a cohesive team. It was a scary place to be. I knew that I needed some sort of change. There wasn't going to be any movement at my school so I started to apply for non-teaching positions and look to transfer to another school in my district. And then a sudden decision by the district - they decided to make some changes at our school, which included moving around principals. I had heard wonderful things about the principal they were bringing in and was excited that change was coming to my school, so I decided to put any plans to move on hold. And then, one of the fifth grade teachers decided to tag along with our previous principal leaving a spot open and the new principal let me jump right in!

I was so darn excited (and still am)! The other three fifth grade teachers are all just lovely and I know that we will make a superb team. I packed up my old room, purged and purged, and moved into my new room. I felt like I once did, excited to teach! I'm looking forward to a renewed school, in a different grade, and in a new room! And so I have already spent much of my first few weeks of summer break thinking, planning, and refreshing for the coming year.

I also discovered something else that has me pretty excited, Teachers Pay Teachers and Teacher's Notebook. One of the first grade teachers at my school started selling her resources on these sites and did pretty well. Since I have TONS of materials that I created over the yearsI figured that I could offer them to teachers as well, and thought I'd put a few things out there over summer. I knew that it would require work, and time, but I didn't think that it would be so useful and addicting! When I pulled up my materials to improve for TpT I found that I made them even better than they already were. It's also pretty thrilling to see your items in your little store. I've only made one sale and have 3 followers, but that is ok. I'm going to keep on improving my materials, and I hear that things really pick up in August.

Good-bye room 21 and 6th grade, you will be missed. Hello room 37 and fabulous 5th!